An optical fiber is made up of a core, cladding, and a buffer coating. The core carries light pulses, the cladding reflects the light pulses back into the core, and the buffer coating protects the core and cladding from moisture, damage, etc. Optical fibers are widely used in fiber-optic communications, which permits transmission over longer distances and at higher bandwidths than other forms of communications. Such fibers are used instead of metal wires because signals travel along them with less loss and are also immune to electromagnetic interference. Optical fibers are also used for illumination, and are wrapped in bundles so they can be routed together, thus allowing illumination of tight spaces.
Today, optical fibers are widely used by communication services to route data to individual homes. For example, telephone companies, cable television companies, and internet service providers (ISPs) often utilize fiber optic cables to transmit data to a subscriber's home. However, running the fiber optic communication lines to the subscriber's home can be very time consuming and expensive. For example, in some residential areas, telephone and other communication lines are run aerially via telephone poles. In these areas, connections are made from the aerial line to a point in the user's home. This connection may require trained installers to route the aerial line down an exterior wall of the home, drill a hole in the wall, run the line through the house, etc. Other residential areas require communication lines to be run underground, for example, beneath roadways. Connecting these lines to a home may require digging up enough ground to locate the communication line, and then digging a path from the communication line to the user's home to run an adjoining line. Additionally, joining lengths of optical fiber is more complex than joining electrical wire or cable. The ends of the fibers must be carefully cleaved, and then spliced together either mechanically or by fusing them together with an electric arc. Special connectors are used to make removable connections.